It seems a little show off-y to have a tour of my own home, but really what are blogs for but to be show off-y? You’ve seen bits and pieces already: too many pictures of my kids’ room and my bathroom even! So why not show you the rest? I get a little annoyed when other sites have home tours and then all you get are photos of little vinettes. I tried to take pictures of the big picture, well really the small picture: our house is only about 900 square feet (85 sq meters). It will be changing in new and exciting ways soon, but for now it suits our little family of five quite well.

If you came over to my house, this is where you would come in–just to the right of the mantel. My dog would probably try to eat your feet (she is old and weird).

If you’d been playing in the mud before you came over, you’d probably have to sit down and take off your shoes.

Oops I got a little vignettey. Well, that’s what mantels are for anyway.  On ours are some doily cover rocks, fake grass, beautiful candles I was given, a bit of art, and my straw garland.

Hey, I am sitting on this couch right this very minute! Yes, we have two green couches in our living room. After the couch I bought in college hit the dust a few years back I went a little crazy on craigslist trying to find the perfect couch. Many months went by and finally I found that vinyl beauty (in the first picture of the post) for not too much. Two days later this lean, green mamajamma was listed for 50 bucks. I snatched it up. They not only delivered it, but threw in a matching chair (which is in the basement because seriously, we can’t have any more green furniture in here)!

Our living room opens up to the dining room slash library slash office slash play room.  No, actually every room is the playroom with three kids in a little house.

Most of our toys are stored in the credenza in the living room, but I also carved out a little play area under the windows in the dining room. The photo of Maya’s play room inspired this space.  Remember the rolling toy boxes I made a while back? This is where they live.

The dining room is also our art gallery, which at the moment is overflowing with end of the year school work. It is a little more edited in this shot. We converted the linen closet into a tiny office that you can see in this post. And the other door leads to our bedroom…

…which is very green.

We updated our kitchen a little this year and hot damn! I love it now. It needs a coat of paint, but it is still pretty.

That’s all! It’s not always so tidy, but we live in it for goodness sake! And we do live in every little bit of our house. And love it too. I hope you enjoyed the tour of our home!

The idea (and pattern and color scheme) for this potholder came from Martha Stewart. This whole potholer thing started because I needed to respect the work I do in my home. Martha Stewart seems to have abandoned that cause.

When I pick up her magazine these days, there is not a lot of substance in it. My back copies of Living have survived many basement clean ups–and subsequent trips to the dump. When I get one out to read I always discover some in depth article about cleaning cloths, or glue, or the mudroom. That is only a sampling from February back issues.  The magazine didn’t used to cater to hipster whims, but rather to a wide swath of people who would like their daily chores recast as an art they can refine. Granted Martha Stewart can get a little crazy, but all in all she has taken homemaking to a higher level of sophistication.

She may have failed me as a homemaking superstar, but she makes nice potholders. It is just a simple log cabin block, quilted. I eyeballed the measurement and it came out pretty nice.

I’d love to know your opinions about Martha and her empire, because I know you’ve got some.

That last potholder grew out of a need for mindfulness in my life. This one, on the other hand, was sewn out of jealously. If you follow the lovely Kayanna on instagram (@junecraft) you already know about the amazing quilt she’s making. Every other day or so another quilt square sewn in bold colors and milky pastels would pop up on my feed and I would freak out. I mean look at this!

Quilting is not my strong suit, but the block was too pretty to pass up. Freshly Pieced has a fantastic tutorial on how to put this block together. She also has a template to print out that you sew directly onto so everything comes out perfectly. I did not print it out (as you probably can tell). The finished quilt square was much too big for a potholder, so I cut the pieces much smaller. Why I didn’t just shrink the template too is beyond me. The lazy man works twice as hard–and stays up sewing late into the night.

This kind of quilt square is incredibly fiddly, but also immensely satisfying when it comes together. In the future I might even have the urge–and possibly the patience–to make a whole quilt. My scrap pile would like that time to come sooner rather than later. Or maybe I could go into the potholder business, because–just so you know–it’s pretty much potholders from here on out.

I made a bunch of potholders recently. I thought this little project would help me get my sewing mojo back and also make the kitchen a more welcoming place.

My intention was not so much “buy a cute and funny little scrubbie so washing dishes is SUPER FUN!!”  I’m trying to respect the job it is I do. Motherhood, housekeeping, much of anyone’s time really is errands and tasks and doing the damn laundry again. We’re told, especially as young mothers, that scheduling “me time” is supposed to erase the stress and monotony of our daily chores, but forced relaxation isn’t going to change the fact that there is laundry to be done.

It’s not that I’m horribly uptight and unable to relax–most evening you will find me on the couch–it’s that all of these things are a huge part of my life. I can’t put them all in the category ” things that need to be done before I can live my real life.” Some people, as Stephinine said, “border […] on poetry when they write about doing laundry or mending clothing.” I will never truly feel enlightening scraping oatmeal out of the bottom of the pan, but I can respect my roll as a caregiver and bring some joy to the tasks that come with being a mother.  My gnarly ass potholders told me my job as a mother was secondary; this silly star potholder says otherwise.

On a completely different note, elsie marley now has its own Facebook page. I know lots of you use Facebook to keep up with blogs, so now you can follow me there too!

Edited to add: It was brought to my attention that it isn’t actually Anthropologie who makes the Primal Cuts dishtowel, but a very talented indie designer Sara Selepouchin. She sells her butcher’s diagram dishtowels and many other amazing things at her shop, girls can tell. They are beautifully designed (the coffee one is my favorite) and professionally printed–definitely not a slap dash affair like mine.

Ellen asked me to do a little tutorial for her handMAYde month and I was happy to oblige.  There were some fabulous tutorials for weddings, babies, and kids, but this last week is for knock offs. Being the cheapskate that I am this was the week for me. I was perusing everyone’s favorite store to knock off and saw these dishtowels:

Actually, last christmas I wanted to silkscreen a set of butcher diagram dishtowels for presents, but that meant learning how to silkscreen, so the idea kind of fizzled. Sadly, I still don’t know how to silkscreen. I thought maybe freezer paper stencils would work, but then the images would loose a lot of detail. Iron on paper or ink jet transfer? Well then you’d have to find and buy supplies and wrestle with your printer. I wanted a quick and dirty project. So I went downstairs to my studio, rustled up some supplies and this is what I got:

to market, to market dishtowel:

a tutorial in 3 easy steps

materials:

• large embroidery hoop
• flour sack towel
• fine point fabric pen
• image to trace (2 copies)

This is the fabric pen I used and it worked surprisingly well. I haven’t the faintest idea where I got it, but I’m guessing some crafty big box store. The flour sack towel I picked up at the grocery store a while back (3 for 5$). They shrink up a lot in the wash, so you should probably wash, dry and iron them before you start. The image might get all weird if you do it after.

directions:

1. fit your embroidery hoop on your towel where you want the image to go. Make sure to put the hoop on upside down–so the towel is right side up, but flat on the table.

2. Then just trace the image. I found it handy to have another copy of my picture  I could refer to as I traced. The flour sack towel is easy enough to see through, but it’s nice to know exactly what the image should look like without picking the towel up to peek under it.

3. Heat set the image with your iron. And that’s it! Quick and dirty–and pretty stylish too.